“We’re Going to Crush This” Says Milwaukee Brewers Employee

Roger Caplinger’s PurpleStride Milwaukee team raised more than $10,000 for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. (Photo by Lesly Juarez on Unsplash)

Navy blue, metallic gold and white are the colors that usually come to mind when baseball fans think of the Milwaukee Brewers, but on a recent Sunday in June, fans donned purple to support their team.

More than 100 Brewers employees formed the team “Roger’s Purple Platoon” for PurpleStride Milwaukee. While they joined hundreds of others in the walk to end pancreatic cancer, their specific mission was for one very special man, Roger Caplinger. Doctors diagnosed Caplinger, the Brewers director of medical operations, with stage I pancreatic cancer in December. Since then, he has fought hard to beat the disease.

“We need to bring awareness to our disease,” Caplinger said on the blog written by Brewers director of new media Caitlin Moyer. “We all came here today to raise dollars for pancreatic research. We need more scientists to eradicate this disease.”

While “Roger’s Purple Platoon” hoped to raise $2,020, a figure that represents the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network’s (PanCAN) goal of doubling survival by 2020, the PurpleStride team collected far more. At this point, generous donors have donated almost $11,000 to PanCAN in Caplinger’s honor.

“When we got diagnosed with this disease, we attacked it like a curveball. You either take a curveball or you hit it, and we decided to crush this,” Caplinger said on the blog.